It will be a little more expensive from now on to rent a room, apartment or house through Airbnb in Kent County. The county assesses a 5% hotel tax to pay for its convention center, but Airbnb users didn't have to pay it until now.
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African-American homeownership has fallen further in Michigan than in any other state since 2000, and a growing number of low-income renters in Metro Detroit are "being squeezed from all sides" when it comes to finding affordable housing. Those are two just two notable conclusions from a series of reports released by the Urban Institute this week about major issues in Southeast Michigan's housing market.
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National Headlines

Members of the defense team for Paul Manafort, including from left, Jay Nanavati, Kevin Downing, Brian Ketcham, Richard Westling, and Thomas Zehnle, walk to federal court as the trial of the former Trump campaign chairman continues, in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018. The focus in Paul Manafort's fraud trial shifts to the defense after prosecutors rested their case.
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A rise in mortgage, auto loan, and credit card balances drives a record amount of post-financial-crisis consumer debt. If consumers are holding record amounts of debt, is that good or bad for the U.S. economy? Surely, intelligent economists could occupy both sides of the debate.
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Royal Bank of Scotland will pay a 4.9 billion US dollar fine to settle allegations it misrepresented the types of mortgages it sold to investors during the housing bubble that ultimately led to the 2008 financial crisis. The US Justice Department said in a statement that the penalty is the largest it has imposed for financial crisis-era misconduct at a single company.
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A search analytics firm has found that the number of online searches for payday loans far outranked mortgage-related queries over the past year in Canada. New data from SEMrush shows that payday loans came in first out of 10 different types of loans, garnering an average search volume of 29,000 a month on search engines such as Google.
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